The old Progressive Conservative Party is to the Reform Party of Canada as The Simpsons is to South Park.

Let me elaborate: If you, like me, went to Catholic school in the early 90’s you may recall that there was something of a moral panic around Bart Simpson – specifically that he was a terrible role model for children, what with the “Underachiever and proud of it” T-shirts and all. Or maybe it was just my Grade 6 teacher, Mrs. Fraumeni. Anyway, The Simpsons Are Immoral and Terrible For Children to Watch was a lesson I absorbed.

Then a few years later South Park came out, and boy did THAT make The Simpsons look good in comparison. People suddenly realized that while it contains a lot of snark and disrespect for authority – Homer and Principal Snyder are both total buffoons, Mr. Burns the caricature of a Gilded Age aristocrat, Marge subordinate to Homer even though she’s much smarter and a better parent than him – The Simpsons is actually, in its own way, a heartwarming comedy about an idiot who really loves his family making his way in the world as best he can. The South Park universe, in comparison, is very cold. The parents are idiots and the children are assholes, and the authority figures are not loveably but dangerously nasty. It is much funnier, though.

Anyway – I’m old enough to remember when the PC party was the most dangerous thing EVAR that was going to destroy Canada as we know it. That was when I was about nine. Then, of course, came the Reform Party and the CCRAP (what a terrible acronym THAT was) and then just plain ol’ Conservatives and now we actually face, you know, destroying Canada as we know it.

And it’s tempting to say, “Yeah, well, everything will probably just be OK because it always is,” but as I covered in my podcast, that’s just a naive and stupid way of looking at things. Things aren’t going to change overnight but they will assuredly change for the worse. And then you deal with the change (or you don’t); you survive (or you don’t); and you get proud of yourself for surviving (or get used to whatever state you find yourself in) and forget you had goals other than keeping your head above water.

So in short I don’t know exactly what to do, other than look into starting Evil Diva Productions: The Militant Wing or Evil Diva Productions: The Berlin Branch.

Well, hold your horses. Yes, I know that the world is – as always – filled with war, famine, terror, and destruction, but maybe this isn’t the end just yet.

Or it’s hell freezing over. Who knows?

I had a whole extremely pessimistic post about the election ready, about how it was bound to be either a Conservative minority or a Liberal minority and I might as well stock up on gas masks and form “Evil Diva Productions: The Militant Wing”, when Ben said, “Didn’t you know? The NDP could totally do OK this time.”

(He didn’t say it exactly like that.)

And while I know the NDP probably won’t win, it does hearten me to know that they’re not far off. Also that even in my riding, where you could run a cactus for Parliament and it would probably win as long as it was a Liberal cactus, NDP candidate Matthew Kellway seems to have a chance.

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